76 " T HIS Is THE ENEMY" is the result of an in- ternment. Five I United Press corres- pondents, shut up in Bad Nauheim fol- lowin a Pearl Har- o bor, decided to spend their pare time, of which there was considerable, pooling their information about their hosts. The five men were Joseph 'v. Grigg, Jack M. Fleischer, Glen M. Stadler, Clinton B. Conger, and Frederick Oechsner. Mr. Oechsner acted as editor and is re- sponsible for the general summary at the end of the book. In all, it can hardly be considered as a very gracious thank- you letter. "This Is the Enemy," conceived, as Mr. Oechsner remarks, "in chaos and born in custody," is a loose mix of old and new information, all of it readable, all of it, it seems to me, pointing to one conclusion: It is impossible to deal with the German nation as a whole in any way except by overwhelming, relentless, and conclusive force. This is going to be a hard lesson for us to learn. \\1 e are a reasonable (well, reasonably reason- able) people and force is unreasonable. But every correspondent who returns from the nightmare horror that is Ger- many tells us the same thing, and learn It we must. The first section of "This Is the Enemy" offers some fresh news about the G()ring-Ribbentrop and Göring- Himmler feuds. I prefer not to take this too seriously. \Vhether GÖring or Ribbentrop or Himmler (or Rommel or Strasser or Schacht or von Papen) should win out after Hitler has been liquidated, we will have exactly the same kind of people to face. lVlr. Oechsner tosses into this first section a generous double handful of personal detail about Hitler which will in terest the sort of person who likes to collect books about Napoleon's "per- sonality." I must confess I cannot get absorbed in Hitler's love life or his read- ing habits or his secret nest on top of the Kehlstein. 'Ve are not going to be able to destroy him any more quickly through knowing that he has had his skulJ measurements set down for the ad- miration of postel ity. I am much more interested in the fact that Hitler's Eu- thanasia Commission, up to the sum- Iner of 1941, had destroyed thIrty-seven thousand persons "for various reasons of BOOKS Oltr Enenzy a1zd Oztrselves physical or mental disability." That sort of detail really tells you sOlnething about the enemy. Section 2 provides the most detailed description we have had to date of the actual technique of German warfare. \\1 e knew before why the German Army has been so successful (Mr. Grigg re- duces the matter to five factors: air su- periority, tank superiority, overwhelm- ing fire power, mobility, and ground- and-air-force coöperation), but we have never had as clear an explanation of just how this mastery has been exploited in battle. In addition to supplying this truly tà ß>m<""llr " ::::<: \ , . -\:f' $ <'". !, " " : '., .: .. .:",....:: - .:..... ./..::.... ....."f!. .:::::::=:.:.:::t;.:..... . ..-:-:..-;::::: useful information, Mr. Grigg manages to demolish the myth (probably German- inspIred) that the German soldier is an unthinking automaton. The opposite is the case; and we are up against twelve million of him, all conditioned, as Sec- tion 3 explains, to obedience, brutality, and maniac faith. Only very rarely does this conditioning break down. The au- thors tell us of one seventeen-year-old boy, detailed to labor-camp work, who just couldn't take it. What he couldn't take was his regular assignment, which was to beat Jews over the head with a shovel until he had reduced each head to a gray-pink pulp. His rebellion was apparen tly not characteristic of his fel- low-coun trvsubmen. One of the concluding chapters has a certain noveltv, for it deals in precise .. ,.:::$ ...:<X#: 'f# . / .j." .:. )0..... ..:.: ,1 I :1:, f: :: M "J ::/,ya ; liS t ::1 ;::::: : ::: I r " ,.. I ; .: t :. L : t:: J R E A ,: <<. .:i: :::: t þ. :*l:, ..../ -. 4,'$ "" ':Ä y?l "Hey, Mac, can yah spare a cup a coffee for a dirrle?"